For A Successful Pasta Recipe, The Right Type Of Sauce Makes A Big Difference

Chefs know—but many home cooks don’t realize—that there’s a reason certain sauces don’t work with certain pastas. Fragile pastas like angel hair can’t be weighted down by heavy ragùs. By the same token, robust penne and shells need more than a dressing of olive oil and garlic.

Barilla, producer of America’s number one brand of pasta, has developed this easy-to use chart that explains it all for you. Now, you’ll know why you never see certain pairings on restaurant menus. In fact, certain cuts of pasta were developed in their regions to accommodate the cuisine—seafood sauces, meat sauces, etc.

Pasta Shape

Sauce

Flat and Long

Fettuccine, Linguine

Fettuccine. As the thicker flat long shape, fettuccine can withstand extremely robust sauces:

Spaghetti. Long and thin, yet not too fine, spaghetti becomes brisk and graceful after cooking and is one of the most versatile shapes. Everybody’s favorite, spaghetti pairs well with just about any kind of sauce.

•Simple tomato sauce, with or without meat or vegetables—medium-size chunks work well
• Fish-based sauces
• Oil-based sauces
• Carbonara

For the more refined and delicate spaghettis, use seafood-based sauces (like tuna) or oil-based sauces.

Jumbo Shells, Lasagne, Manicotti. These famous baking shapes are known for their generous consistency and heartiness, allowing for use with the most robust and highly flavorful sauces and the most sumptuous and creative fillings. Sauces can be rich in chunks and abundant with moisture to facilitate oven-baking. Lasagne, the most well-known pasta al forno, varies from region to region—Tuscans and Emilia-Romagnans make it with a béchamel, a meat ragù and grated Parmigiano; Ligurians make it with pesto.

The thickness of these shapes requires full flavor sauces. The large diameter, combined with the ridges that penne and rigatoni bring, make them ideal to retain sauces on the entire surface, inside and out!

• Chunkier meat or vegetable-based sauces work well with the ridged shapes, like ragù alla bolognese—red sauce made with ground meat, onions, celery, carrots and tomatoes
• Refined dairy-based sauces, like four cheese or a mushroom cream sauce
• Fresh, light sauces—like olive oil or simple fresh tomato—work best with smooth shapes (mostaccioli, ziti) since they do not have the benefit of ridges to hold more sauce
• Tomato sauces or spicy sauces, like arrabbiata
• Also great for baked casserole dishes, known as pasta al forno; great with cheese-based sauces like four-cheese

Versatile Shapes

Elbows, Farfalle, Fiori, Medium Shells, Pipette, Rotini

Farfalle (bow ties). Farfalle is great with intense fragrances and flavors. Consider:

Rotini. A sister to fusilli, rotini is made of lots of twists and spirals, allowing it to embrace both refined and simple sauces. Vegetables, meat, seafood or fragrant spices love to glide in the grooves of this shape. Rotini is often used in the U.S. in pasta salads. Traditional Italian usage might include: